Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

By Lev GrossmanThursday, May 20, 2010

Shteyngart: Marion Ettlinger

Available July 27

It's not easy to summarize Shteyngart; there's so much satirical gunpowder packed into every sentence that the effect gets lost in the short version. But basically, this is a love story between an old-school, book-loving throwback and a steely, beautiful, postmodern woman  set in crumbling, toxic, illiterate, impoverished near-future America. It's ridiculously witty and painfully prescient, but more than either of those, it's romantic.